Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Okay, the prices haven't exactly exploded but the market is very firm.
From Agrimoney:

Exploding beer brings fizz to malting barley price

Exploding
beer is bringing fizz to the malting barley market by forcing brewers
to seek alternatives to problematic Danish grain, bringing firm prices
to supplies from other countries.

In
Paris, malting barley futures have escaped the price drop evident in
other grains, rising 4% over the last month, for May delivery, compared
with a 4% drop in milling wheat.

In
the UK, cash prices have rebounded from a summer low of about £180 a
tonne "nearly getting back to £200 a tonne", a UK grain trader told
Agrimoney.com.

"It
is going to go back to £200 a tonne, and back through £200 a tonne if
you have the right stuff," he added, pegging the premium over feed
barley at a "historical high" of about £50 a tonne.

'Absolute rubbish'

The
rises reflect a poor-quality harvest from Denmark, a country which,
despite its relatively small acreage, and strong domestic demand for
malting barley from brewers such as Copenhagen-based Carlsberg, still
ranks as a major exporter.

The
700,000-1.2m tonnes it exports a year sees it vie with France for the
title of the European Union's top malting barley shipper.

While
the harvest started well, with the first one-third or so of malting
barley coming off with excellent specifications, rains meant the quality
of the next 40% was compromised, and the last cuts "absolute rubbish",
an industry insider said.

Furthermore,
Denmark's concentrated storage system, which sees grains kept in large
central elevators, meant that the poor grain was not segregated from the
good, compounding the problem.

'Beer all over the floor'

The
result has been Danish supplies contaminated with unusually high
concentrations of Fusarium, a fungus which stops kernel development in
the field, and in the brewery causes effervescent beer.

"A
high incidence of Fusarium in Danish barley is causing beer brewed from
it to react somewhat explosively when the bottle is opened. Result:
beer all over the floor and none to drink," grain traders at a major
commodities house said....MORE